A culinary history of American slavery

Nationally recognized culinary historian Michael W. Twitty of Washington, D.C., prepares okra soup Saturday at Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village in Avella in a demonstration on how slaves provided for their families before the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Scott Beveridge / Observer-Reporter

Some of the more than 50 people who attended a presentation Saturday at Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village on the culinary history of American slavery.
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AVELLA – Someone would ring a bell when it was time for American slave children to eat and they would all come running to the hog trough on Southern plantations before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

The children would be given either an empty oyster shell or a piece of a slate shingle that fell from a roof to scoop out their dinner of a bland mush of ground corn and flour mixed into boiling water called ash cake.

The scene around the hog trough, Twitty said, appeared as if the children were living in a Third World country eating from the same container used to feed pigs.

“The children were running around without shoes. Their hands were not washed. There was no clean water to begin with,” said Twitty at the presentation that attracted an audience of more than 50 people at the Avella-area tourist destination.

To give the mush flavor, slaves drizzled as much molasses as possible on the cakes, or, if they were lucky, they would top it with a piece of fatback.

Scott Beveridge is a North Charleroi native who has lived most of his life in nearby Rostraver Township. He is a general assignments reporter focusing on investigative journalism and writing stories about the mid-Mon Valley. He has a bachelor's degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a master's from Duquesne University. Scott spent three weeks in Vietnam in 2004 as a foreign correspondent under an International Center for Journalists fellowship.